Doctor to the Plants.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 2 October 1914, Page 2

Doctor to the Plants.

If you eat too much, the chances are that you will get fat and mil.by. It is the same with trees. If the food they get is too easily digested the /litres of the tree turn spongy and rotten and Win Ha]i weakens.' When fruit-trees turn fat, the fruit is at first richer and riper. It soon becomes insipid, however. It is only recently that those changes in trees have boon put down to the right cause, b^t it is now generally recognised that good living ■ may make a tree llabby and dropsical. A man may keep down his fat with diet, exercise, etc. There is no cure for the fat tree. Corpulence is not the only disease trees share with us. Many plants are subject to anaemia—clover, onions, cucumbers, and melons being the chief sufferers. The remedy for this unnatural pallor is, just as in the case of human beings, iron. A doze!! large nails driven into the roots of an anaemia tree Will, in most cases, bring it back to health, as the acid sap eats away the iron and carries iron salts up the trunk.